Abstract
There have been relatively few studies on sign language interaction carried out within the framework of conversation analysis (CA). Therefore, questions remain open about how the basic building blocks of social interaction such as turn, turn construction unit (TCU) and turn transition relevance place (TRP) can be understood and analyzed in sign language interaction. Recent studies have shown that signers regularly fine-tune their turn-beginnings to potential completion points of turns (Groeber, 2014; Groeber and Pochon-Berger, 2014; De Vos et al., 2015). Moreover, signers deploy practices for overlap resolution as in spoken interaction (McCleary and Leite, 2013). While these studies have highlighted the signers' orientation to the “one-at-a-time” principle described by Sacks et al. (1974), the present article adds to this line of research by investigating in more detail those sequential environments where overlaps occur. The contribution provides an overview of different types of overlap with a focus of the overlap's onset with regard to a current signer's turn. On the basis of a 33-min video-recording of a multi-party interaction between 4 female signers in Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS), the paper provides evidence for the orderliness of overlapping signing. Furthermore, the contribution demonstrates how participants collaborate in the situated construction of turns as a dynamic and emergent gestalt and how they interactionally achieve turn transition. Thereby the study adds to recent research in spoken and in signed interaction that proposes to rethink turn boundaries and turn transition as flexible and interactionally achieved.
Highlights
The precursory work of Sacks et al (1974) on the machinery of turn-taking in conversation has built the foundation for the conversation analytic tradition
In spoken interaction an overlap between the end of a lexical unit by speaker A with the inbreath of the incipient speaker B is of a different quality than the overlap between two lexical units. An issue on this behalf is that all types of overlaps are indicated with the same transcription symbol—as mentioned in Groeber and Pochon-Berger (2014), the use of various transcription symbols for different types of overlaps may become relevant for documenting such differences, both in signed and in spoken interaction
The data comes from a larger corpus of DSGS narratives and interactions that has been gathered within the project “Gaze and Productive Signing in a Corpus of Interactions of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Signers of Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS),” conducted at the University of Applied Sciences of Special Needs Education, and funded by Swiss National Science Foundation
Summary
The precursory work of Sacks et al (1974) on the machinery of turn-taking in conversation has built the foundation for the conversation analytic tradition. In a recent conversation-analytic account, McCleary and Leite (2013) provide compelling evidence for several overlap resolution devices (Schegloff, 2000) that deaf participants rely upon for managing overlapping signing These more recent studies have demonstrated the importance of a clear definition of overlap with respect to the movement phases of signs (cf Section The Lexical Unit in Sign Language). I suggest that the other simultaneous productions may fall under the term overlap as these movements are considered as being part of the turn (even if they are not part of the syntactic unit; cf Section Turn and TCU in Sign Language Research) This recalls the difference that is made in spoken interaction between overlapping conducts that are troublesome and others that are not troublesome. An issue on this behalf is that all types of overlaps are indicated with the same transcription symbol (square brackets, [xx])—as mentioned in Groeber and Pochon-Berger (2014), the use of various transcription symbols for different types of overlaps may become relevant for documenting such differences, both in signed and in spoken interaction
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